Player run shops.

[________________Trof]

I had this idea one-day while standing around shouting on the shopping channel and waiting (and waiting and waiting) for shopbot to return an answer. In between all the spaming and walking around trying to find if someone wanted to buy what I had to sell, It came to me.

Enter portable shops. My plan calls for a portable shop placed on the ground in front of the character while they are sitting. These are not permanent shops and the character must be sitting and logged in to AO. The interface could be very simple, create a reference object, drop it in the shop and assign a price. The item would appear in the shop. Selling the items would work as current shops do except the inventory is removed from your person or bank and the credits are deposited into your account.
Of course there would have to be a few rules. When you try to drop a reference object in your shop the actual object must reside in your pack or bank. Only one portable shop allowed per character.

You may ask why.
Well I think it would help the player economy for one, it would allow players to sell items they do no need for a reasonable price, i.e. you purchased a weapon 4 level’s ago for 20,000, you want the nice new shiny one, the local shops only wants to give you 3 credits for the old one. The industrious could purchase common items found in one area and sell them in another where they are rarely seen. I envision market areas springing up with vendors selling their wares with people milling around, shopping and chatting. Perhaps portable shops could be limited to certain areas as to not cause mass lag around already popular areas. However, the greatest advantage is this would actually give players a reason to use the trade skills.

Comments appreciated, Flames ignored (well most of the time),

Trof.

Free your Mind! Clans!.

[Zarrot]

Great Idea...

I have been trying to sell all sorts of low level nanos below in store prices with no luck. It seems to me that the low level trade economy doesn't exist. I would be willing to take 1000's less just to avoid selling them back to the stores for 50 credits. Setting up a little booth might draw people over.

[__________LostBoyJim]

Great idea. Make it so that you can only set them up inside existing shops (and the Cup and such).. this greatly cut down on city lag.

Even if only traders got this ability it would be great, they would buy more stuff to fill their shops.

Bleys

[___________GoldBrain]

I like this idea. I think they're planning on implementing it sometime, I saw an idea like this in one of the upcoming patch details. I think it would be great, though, all sorts of people selling their exotic and mysterious wares to uncultured beginners. The idea of them only being in certain places is good, too, there's enough lag in the city.

[______________Promoo]

You can already do this to some extent (easier if you are a neut).

1. Find yourself a nice well known location in each town (like the BB stand and lets face it far better use that selling the burnt meat of a murdered Bronto)

2. Run an ad on all the shopping channels that X shop is now open for business Y night between Z times.

3. Have decent equipment / services available (you may want it to be a shop owner guild for instance).

4. Undercut the norm shops, but make a reasonable profit (10% say).

5. Offer Unique or rare item hunt teams (so Agents would be good for the run and grab side of the guild and money gatherers).

Just an idea to start with ...

Macmoo - Engineer, BLA http://www.bronto-army.com

[Darkbane]

Can I suggest this be done as a trader only item (trade stall or some such) with its own inventory that the trader can access (say 18-24 slots) - avoids the reference and in inv/bank issues, but other players get the trade interface when they right-click.

It could use a model such as the clan 'shop-of-fortune' one, and should show '<playername>'s trade stall' when selected. As you said, it should only be deployable when sitting, and should automatically undeploy and return to the trader's inventory when they get up (cancelling any trades in progress).

It would be neat if they could get XP for this, but that would be too exploitable